


Hugh Grant Explains It All for You

by ljs



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-08
Updated: 2010-10-08
Packaged: 2017-10-12 12:39:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/124903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season Six, diverging from canon after "Flooded": rom com with an edge. In a world falling apart, Giles and Anya test the axiom "better living through pop culture," most especially the masterworks of Hugh Grant (and Richard Curtis).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Anya doesn’t always know what to do with herself on Sunday afternoons. Despite the busy trade which larger shops enjoy on the second day of the weekend, the Magic Box stays closed– she _could_ add new afternoon hours, she’s the manager now and in charge of all operating decisions, but she appreciates the idea of a day off. In theory. If only there was something to _do_ , she thinks.

Xander is changing clothes in the bedroom before he goes out to have a coffee-and-best-friends thing with Willow at the Espresso Pump. She can hear the drawers slamming and the hangers rattling like temper-storms; they’ve been fighting for the past couple of days, both of them making nasty little comments that catch on skin like demon-claws, ever since he refused yet again to tell everyone they’re engaged. But Buffy’s back from the grave, and Giles is back from England, at least for a while....

Anyway, she’s put her ring away in one of the drawers Xander’s slamming. She doesn’t feel like carrying it any more -- it seems like a lie. For some reason she doesn’t feel like keeping it at her little apartment either.

She could stay here and clean, of course. She looks around the light-filled apartment Xander works hard to maintain, with her financial assistance since she almost lives here. It’s weird how bits of herself are scattered, no, _buried,_ amid his stuff – pink nail polish next to his Playstation, a brightly coloured shoe next to one of his work T-shirts. Her things seem alien all of a sudden, as if they’ve been left by a future Mrs Xander Lavelle Harris who has no relationship to herself, a costume she’s taken off like any number of vengeance guises.

Not that she’s taken this one off yet, she tells herself. Not yet.

The TV Guide lies open in front of her, and she picks it up to see if there’s anything on. Sunday is usually sports, sports, and more sports, which she finds uninteresting unless there’s body contact, but occasionally there’s something...oh, the movie channel’s running one of her favourites again. It starts in just a few minutes, too.

She collects a diet drink from the ones she keeps in the refrigerator, then curls up on the couch with her tote bag and clicks on the TV. Once she finds the channel, she settles in and pulls the box of brand-new Magic Box sales slips out of her bag. The feel of specially printed goods with her name on them is always a mood-lifter, much like Hugh Grant.

She’s flipping through the box when Xander emerges, ready to go. He stops by the front door, however, throwing his keys up in the air for a minute in an annoying way before he says, "Four Weddings and a Funeral again? Isn’t this like the millionth time you’ve seen it?"

"Yes. But I find the repetition of jokes soothing -- I finally get the David Cassidy one. Anyway, you know I enjoy Hugh Grant. There’s something very appealing about a handsome, stammering Englishman. It’s a truth acknowledged through all ages and dimensions, except the Francophone ones, and they’re lying." She pulls out a sales slip and admires the new Magic Box logo with the sharp-edged notation underneath: _Owners, Rupert Giles and Anya Jenkins._

"Something appealing about a ‘stammering Englishman.’ Is that right," Xander says, with another jangle of keys.

She looks up at that. "Why do you suddenly sound like your dad when the last beer’s gone? It’s disturbing."

He backs into the door, makes it swing. "I’m sorry. Sorry, Anya. Uh...are you going to stay til I get back?"

After all the fights, summer and fall and weekend, she’s finally hearing what he’s not saying. He wants his space back. "Not a problem. I can go." She carefully places her papers back in the box so they don’t get wrinkled.

"Anya, no...."

"No, Xander, it’s fine. I’ll leave the apartment to you today, and I’ll stay at my place tonight to make it easier on you. On us." After making sure she has everything she needs, she bolts off the couch and goes to the door.

He hasn’t moved, his hand locked on the doorknob now, his arm keeping her from going anywhere. "Anya...it’s just a thing for today, not forever," he says quietly. "I don’t mean to hurt you."

"I don’t think you mean to. But you keep doing it anyway."

When she kisses him good-bye, trying to recapture what it’s like to kiss the man she loves, the familiar taste seems to have disappeared, no, turned sour and weird.

This would depress her, but right now she doesn’t choose to think about things slipping away. She doesn’t think there’s time enough in this world to cry about being left alone again. So, holding her bag tightly, she runs down the stairs and out into the California sunshine. It’s only a few blocks to her place, a little studio on the outskirts of Sunnydale’s ‘downtown.’ If she runs all the way, she’ll get there before Hugh Grant starts the humourous litany of curses at the beginning of the movie. She loves that part.

..........................................................

Giles struggles to get his bags through the open door of his new hotel room, then drops them on the floor a few steps in so he can push the door shut with his foot. Then he breathes.

It’s been a... difficult couple of days. He’d just got his head around the idea that he was home again, just begun to find his way through his new job and his old flat, just begun to find pieces of himself he’d left behind, when Willow called him about Buffy. He couldn’t fly across the ocean fast enough – he’d even thought guiltily of calling Maud Harkness’ coven for teleportation – but now that he’s here, held her and reassured himself this is real, talked to everyone, he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

Well, when he says ‘talked to everyone,’ he means that words have been said. However, nothing has been communicated. He doesn’t know why Buffy keeps running from him. He doesn’t know why Willow bloody _doesn’t_.

He pushes his bags to the side, then picks up his briefcase. His organizer – picked out so surprisingly by Anya last Christmas, he thinks, as he always does when he holds the soft leather – has his important phone numbers and his phone card.

When he jumps backward onto the bed, a boyish habit he’s glad no one knows about, he bounces just a little, and smiles for the first time that day. He uses the remote and turns on the TV at random, mutes it, and then makes a call he’s been dreading.

Robson answers on the first ring. "Yes, what?"

"‘s me, Robson. Giles. Sorry to be late in ringing... Er, just calling to check in regarding the project–"

"The one you’ve abandoned? It’s going as well as can be expected without the lead cataloguer. There are at least seven knives from two different centuries and three different dimensions I have no sodding idea how to classify."

Giles thinks about all the projects he’s abandoned in his life. He doesn’t want to think about them. Instead, he makes soothing noises, elicits basic information about what progress the team has made, parries the request for a fixed return. He has no idea where he’s supposed to be and when anything will happen, no, really, he can’t answer now.

On the television Hugh Grant is waking up late for the first wedding. As Giles listens to Robson, he mouths the words along with the floppy-haired film-star git.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. It’s all that can be said, really.

......................................................................

The Magic Box on a Monday morning is a pleasant place to be, Anya always thinks. The week stretches ahead of her, full of the joys of commerce and serving people and getting money in return.

She’s humming as she straightens the already tidy pile of new sales slips she’s arranged by the cash register. The words _Owners, Rupert Giles and Anya Jenkins_ seem to smile up at her – this is a metaphor, however, not a reality like in that one dimension where paper goods can _not_ be trusted -- and she smiles down at them in return.

The back door opens, then she hears a familiar footstep. Giles hasn’t been gone that long, but she’s missed his stealthy British entrances in the morning. He’s humming too, just like he always does – which, now that she thinks of it, isn’t that stealthy after all.

He comes around the corner, smiling. "Good morning, Anya," he says, still fiddling with the knot of his tie. She knows that he doesn’t actually put on his tie until the last possible moment before coming into the shop; for someone who everyone thinks is a tweedy suit guy, he really isn’t fond of those kind of clothes. He just thinks suit and tie are appropriate business wear.

And as she thinks of propriety, and then proprietorship, she says, "Good morning, Giles! You look handsome, and alert, and I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that you–"

"–Signed papers," he finishes with her. Then, alone: "I know, I know, you’re the manager. Don’t worry."

She pulls a face. "Sorry. I’m nagging, and I hate that voice, and I hate that activity. So, Giles, welcome back to _your_ shop!" Then she flutters one of the new sales slips at him in greeting.

Smiling more broadly, he comes over to the counter and examines the paper. "Very nice. Er, you chose a lovely font, well done. And really, I’m shocked and pleased my name still comes first."

"You started the Magic Box. It’s only right." She replaces the slip, centring it neatly. "So, um...."

"Actually, I was wondering if I’d got any faxes yet this morning." He leans on the glass counter, elbows planted on the duplicate No Cheques/Checks Accepted and the Shoplifters Will Be Cursed stickers, and she can smell that nice bay rum cologne he always wears. It hasn’t seemed like the Magic Box without him.... "I’m expecting something from Jack Robson, likely with a Council heading."

She doesn’t even have to look. "Nothing yet."

He frowns over her shoulder in what she believes to be the general direction of England. "Well, he _said_... Yes. All right, never mind."

"It’ll be something about Slaying? About Buffy’s resurrection?"

"Er, no." He clasps his hands together and stares down at them. She can barely hear him say, "I didn’t exactly tell them she died. So the second part, well, doesn’t really apply."

She lays her hands over his, takes a second to appreciate masculine warmth, then says, "Why the hell didn’t you tell them?"

His glare is awe-inspiring this close, as are the fists he clenches in her hold. "Anya, I don’t really think it’s any – Right, fine. Because God knows who they’d have sent to replace her, what they’d do to the Hellmouth. Because I don’t trust them, all right?"

She thinks about what she’s observed of the Council in the past couple of years, what she knew about them before that. She also considers the suppressed violence in his voice, stronger now, part of the edge which he developed after Buffy jumped and which apparently hasn’t been filed off by her return. "All right by me," she says, and to soothe him she pets his hands before moving away.

Who knew Giles would be so warm, she thinks as she heads for the Dried Potion Herb of the Day jars.

"Right. Sorry. Er, anyway," he says as if they were having a normal conversation, with just a little lingering huskiness. "That fax is about, um, a project I’m working on. But, since it’s not here... I think I’ll go fetch the morning drinks. What’s your pleasure this morning?"

"Usual Monday morning drink," she says, and when she turns around, she’s smiling. "Do you remember?"

"I think I might well remember an orange juice cut with Perrier, Anya, yes. Because it’s bloody insane. But I know, I know, you like the bubbles." He inclines his head, smile pulling at his very nice mouth. "Back in a moment."

A customer comes in at that moment, so she walks with Giles toward the door, ignoring the way her knees feel strangely wobbly.

The shop gets a small rush then – the new stock of candles is moving very well – and she forgets for a few minutes that she’s expecting a drink. She’s just finished giving a customer his change when the fax machine behind the counter starts whirring. This must be what Giles is waiting for, she thinks, she should make sure it’s okay, and with a hurried "Thank you for shopping at the Magic Box, we appreciate your patronage and your money," she turns to check the machine–

Only to jolt up against a very solid, tall, nice-smelling male body carrying two cups, one of which is crushed against her chest, which splashes orange juice (cut with Perrier) all down the front of her new white blouse.

" _Bugger_ ," Giles says, and he’s suddenly free of cups and there with his handkerchief, dabbing away at the stain.

Big hand, warm even through the linen and liquid, brushing her breasts, catching a nipple there.... Anya has no suitable words for this particular pleasure-sensation. It’s all too new for that.

"Oh God, Anya, I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry." The lovely big hand and the handkerchief are taken away, and Giles is flushed to his ears and practically biting that well-shaped, thin bottom lip of his, and –

Nope. She has absolutely no suitable words.

But she manages a quiet, "Um, that’s okay. My bad. Sorry for being in the way."

"No, my fault. Clumsy, always have been."

"Let’s say, stealthy. You’re surprisingly stealthy."

He almost smiles at that, but doesn’t look up from where he’s wadding the handkerchief in his hands, passing it back and forth, his fingers working. She really would like him to stop being so... whatever it is that she’s finding so incredibly attractive.

The bell over the door saves them – it announces three of their best customers, three local coven members who order big amounts and require a great deal of attention. "Um, Anya, I’ll take care of the Herbals." This, of course, is their private name for these particular witches, and it pleases her he remembers. "Why don’t you take a break, er, go home perhaps and change? I’ll hold the retail fort til you’re back."

"Okay." That sounds weak. She pulls herself together, regardless of orange-juice-stained silk and uncomfortable arousal, and beams at him. "Okay, thanks! But don’t you have to look at your fax?"

"Later," he says, as the oldest Herbal, the one with the twisty silver hair, waves at them from the newt stand. He smiles back. "Excuse me again. And I’m really terribly sorry."

When he goes off with a cheerful "Miss Lavender, how may I help you today?" Anya braces her hands on the counter and breathes in deeply. The wet fabric is cool against her skin.

Warm, strong hand. She can still feel the touch against her breasts.

The phone shrills next to her, scares her, settles her back down. She picks it up: "The Magic Box, here for all your magic needs, this is Anya. What can I do for you?"

"Anya, it’s Buffy." She doesn’t sound like the in-control Slayer right now. "I had a little trouble at Xander’s construction site, I won’t be going back there. Can you, maybe, give me a job?"

..............................................

Giles looks at the newly faxed report from Robson, then looks back at the one faxed yesterday, compares the images. That one knife with the strange triple-edge, a very particular craftsmanship – the Daa dimension workers always have a notch just at the edge of blade and hilt, he thinks, but he can’t quite make it out. It requires visual and tactile investigation.

He needs to be back in England. He can’t leave yet.

The Magic Box has been quiet this morning, not like yesterday’s mad rush. He can still feel Anya under his hand, feel shivers and softness, barely covered, wet–

He shoves his left hand in his pocket and turns the top page to the light with his other.

Part of him is also attending to Buffy, who’s started her new job today. Over by the bookshelves Anya’s earnestly explaining the basics of stockroom and display arrangement. He can tell Buffy’s not entirely listening, her fingers drifting along the edge of a shelf, her head tipped in an inattentive pose he recognises from a hundred meetings.

He looks back down at the three-sided knife, one capable of giving pain from so many angles.

This morning he’s been to breakfast at the Summers’ house. Willow has had some disagreement with Tara – the two of them were hesitant around each other, dodging and weaving with bodies and words, except for once when Willow snapped out an uncomfortably strong response. In that moment he could almost smell the smoke of a bitter spell, and so could Tara. She’s already stepping back from Willow, he thinks, and what will Willow do then? Not that she spoke to him beyond "Please pass the milk," not that she paid attention to the couple of times he tried to start a nonconfrontational conversation.

Buffy just drifted through, not listening there either, barely eating. At least Dawn seemed happy enough, however, even while explaining to him the vagaries of the yet unrepaired plumbing.

This reminds him to check his watch. He needs to go to the bank this afternoon – he’s had money wired to the account he left open for God knows what reason here in Sunnydale, when he sent everything else home. The plumbing repair’s going to take a huge bite out of his already depleted savings, but he does want to help.

Buffy’s fingers are drifting faster over the shelf now. She’s not listening to anyone.

But Anya’s doing quite a good job with the instruction regardless of her audience, he thinks, she’s got most of the high points – and then he hears her say, "When serving the more frightening customers, I find it always helps to imagine myself naked," and his mind bursts with images of her with that stained shirt ripped open, him licking sticky orange sweetness from the valley between her breasts, going down and –

"Oh dear _God_ ," he mutters, trying to blink away the image, getting to his feet in some blind impulse toward flight. He can’t stay here. He can’t leave yet.

She’s Xander’s, he tells himself, her body’s twenty-one years old even if the essence of her isn’t, she wrought vengeance for a millennium, she’s _Xander’s_. You can’t, Rupert. You know you can’t.

The bell over the door saves him; it rings with a command that Anya pushes Buffy to answer. He collects himself enough to stop Buffy on the way and burble something about the library and how to serve customers, he can’t even listen to himself, he’s got to take off his glasses and polish lenses through which he doesn’t want to see. She says something in return he doesn’t quite hear, and he murmurs something, he doesn’t know what, and she turns away.

He sees Anya catch Buffy and smile at her, and he has to make himself look somewhere else. The reports... He should read his reports. Yes.

Buffy disappears downstairs after talking to that disagreeable woman who’s still hovering by the mandrake roots. After Anya finishes ringing up the customer’s slug candles – why did she ever _order_ them, he thinks as he always does – she comes over to the table and sits down. "Okay. I’m not sure Buffy’s cut out for retail," she says without preface.

"I...I think she’s doing fine so far," he says, studying the faxed representation of a Boko sword. He can’t look at her right now.

"Well, perhaps it’s the merchandise she finds boring or overwhelming. She’s not a magic user, after all, she might do better with shoes or clothes or weapons or something else she’s studied for years. But, Giles, she actually _yawned_ when I showed her my new system and backup for organising the material for the Dried Potion Herb of the Day!"

He’s impressed with the system himself, actually – Anya knows a great deal about proper placement and order, about classifying, about making links between things. "Well, er, not everyone has your gifts. And remember it’s her first day."

"Point taken. My first day wasn’t as stellar as all the subsequent ones," she says, with a dry little twist of voice he doesn’t usually associate with her. But she _does_ have a sense of sarcasm, now that he thinks about it – it’s just usually not self-directed.

Forgetting every good intention he has, he puts his hand on her arm. Soft silk, he registers, although he doesn’t want to. "Anya, you know I wouldn’t have asked you to be my partner if I didn’t think you were more than capable of the job."

"I know. And I do thank you." When she beams at him, the silk moves under his fingers even as he presses down. It’s an oddly private connection in the midst of their public space, a moment where time seems to loop around, it’s happened before, it’ll happen again no matter what he does to stop it–

An unholy clatter from down in the stockroom, a jump and a worrying expletive from the disagreeable woman by the mandrake, and he and Anya are broken out of their stolen moment whether they will or no. He wishes he didn’t regret the loss.

After Buffy finishes ringing up the customer and promising delivery of the special order– although he’s _sure_ they did have an undamaged mummy-hand down there – he and Anya converge upon Buffy at the register. He congratulates Buffy on a job well done, and then Anya discovers the omission of the delivery charge, the same mistake she’d made late on her first day. He’d docked _her_ first paycheque for that, he remembers.

"Yeah, I’ll just take it out of your pay!" Anya beams, frankly softening the blow a bit more than he had.

But Buffy looks at him to soften it further, to take it back. He can’t, it wouldn’t be fair -- but with a sinking heart, he tries, "Er, right. Well, I’m sure Buffy understands that...."

Slam of her nametag on the counter, slam of the door after she stalks out. Oh yes, Buffy clearly understands.

Anya sighs. "Told you she’s not cut out for retail."

"No, it seems not."

She looks down at the cash register, one slim finger playing with the keys. It’s a sign that she’s mentally editing her remarks – it happens more and more these days, he thinks, she’s not as open as she once was. At last she says, "Do you think that door-slamming’s just due to her incompatibility and discomfort with the service sector?"

He fears it’s not. All he allows himself to say is, "I don’t know, Anya. I just don’t know."

The bell rings again: another familiar customer, that Jonathan boy. "I’ll get it. He’s been special-ordering a lot lately," she says, and slides too close to him on her way. He can feel the touch of her silk, of _her_ , even through his clothes.

He tells himself to ignore it, to think about work instead. He’ll check the stockroom – he might have a Daa knife down there, come to think of it, perhaps he can do his job from here after all.

When he flicks on the light, however, he can tell something’s wrong. Halfway down the steps, and he can see it – a wrecked mummy-hand, some broken potion jars from which odd scents rise and intertwine, a couple of weapons twisted by Slayer-strength.

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck," he says.


	2. Chapter 2

Anya spins the coffee cup in her hands, kicks her heels against her chair, and smiles. It’s a beautiful California Sunday afternoon, and her seat here on the patio of the Espresso Pump catches both autumn wind and sunlight.

This being alone stuff isn’t so bad, considering.

The past week has been a little...strange. There was the Buffy meltdown on Tuesday, which meant that after Giles went to the bank they stayed late that evening, fixing what could be repaired and throwing away what couldn’t. His mouth was tight the whole time, as if he couldn’t trust himself not to shout any more obscenities or let out the personal problems she suspects he’s storing just as high to the ceiling as the jars of mandrake root in their shop. Luckily for his blood pressure the pre-Halloween rush has kept him busy. Kept them both busy, in fact, so she didn’t have to worry about herself either.

But no, there’s still Xander, her own problem stored in a jar, tapping its arms and screaming to get out. She only slept over at his apartment once this week, on Friday date night, and then it was bad Chinese food, awkward silences, and more awkward if adequate sex. He’s trying, she knows he is, but he still doesn’t want to tell anyone about the engagement.

It’s probably a good idea, though. She doesn’t think there will be an engagement much longer, or a relationship. The big red numbers on the time bomb are pretty clear.

She takes a sip of coffee, lets it linger on her tongue. She accustoms herself to the taste, just as she’s accustoming herself to the idea of a Xander-less future.

"Hey, Anya!" comes from down the sidewalk.

Dawn and Tara are heading her way, bags and long hair swinging. She touches her own hair reflexively – is it time for a change? Colour, cut, something? – then calls back, "Hello! What are you two doing?"

"We’re off for ice cream, but I wanted a coffee first," Dawn says. She dumps her bag on the table, then drags her wallet out and pokes a finger at its contents. "Gosh, I’m so _poor_. And Buffy’s all tightwaddy these days."

Since Anya compiled Buffy’s list of big debts and little income, she feels qualified to say, "I bet she’s giving you as much as she can. You guys really _are_ cash-poor." Which makes her think of charity and axioms she’s heard like ‘Giving starts at home, or the local coffee shop,’ and so she digs around in her own purse. "Here, one grande coffee on me. But you’ll have to get your own ice cream."

The money’s out of her hand almost before she finishes speaking, and Dawn says, "Thanks, Anya – and hey Tara, do you want anything?"

"No, I’ll just wait for the ice cream. You go on." Tara smiles in that warm witch manner, and Dawn dances inside. After a second of hesitation, which makes Anya worry that her new solitude is somehow a repellent, a sort of soon-to-be-spurned-former-demon stink, Tara sits down.

She looks tired these days, Anya thinks before she says, "Hi, Tara. Willow’s off with Xander again?"

"Um, yes, they went to the mall – but don’t you know that?"

"No," Anya says as airily as she can. "Xander and I are cherishing our alone time. I’ve read that it’s very healthy for couples to develop separate interests."

She actually did read that, although she thought it was kind of ridiculous. Still, this week she has found pleasure in sitting by herself in her little apartment with a glass of wine, surrounded by flowers and magazines (Self, Forbes, Bazaar, and the Society of Magic Shops quarterly publication) and her new copy of Intermediate Spellcasting. She’s decided she needs to get her power back but not through vengeance, and she smiles at Tara, who she thinks already knows that.

Tara smiles back. "So, is, is coffee your new interest?"

"No, just a beverage," Anya says. "I’m really going to the two-dollar movie theatre, you know, the renovated ‘cinema’ two blocks over? They’re showing Hugh Grant’s Notting Hill, it starts in half an hour." It then occurs to her – "Oh, would you and Dawn like to come too? It’s the cheap show, after all, and Hugh Grant will be handsome and stammering, a sure crowd-pleaser."

"No." Tara’s smile goes away. "I probably wouldn’t spend so much time on Hugh Grant, and I don’t really want to watch Julia Roberts either. I just... don’t."

"Right. Lesbian in love with a power-mad redhead. I forgot." Anya sips her coffee. Then, because Tara looks so sad, so woman-in-need-of-a-wish, "Are you okay?"

Tara looks down so her hair covers her face, but says, sideways and shy, "Not really. It’s hard with Willow right now... Are _you_ okay, Anya?"

"Better than you, I think. But yes, it’s hard."

They sit in quiet bad-relationship solidarity until Dawn comes back with her coffee.

When Dawn gives her the change, however, Anya thinks of Magic Box business. "Okay, after the demon-derived disaster with Buffy, I had a talk with Giles – we’re going to need _competent_ help in the shop, since he’s not really working there any more although I’m happy he comes in every day while he’s still here. I know you guys are signed up for Halloween duty, but... do you want real part-time jobs?"

Dawn says suspiciously, "What kind of job?"

"Well, you’re only old enough to work a couple of hours a day after school, but that’s often when I need reshelving done. Say, ten hours a week of menial but rewarding stock work at minimum wage, enough to keep you in coffee, ice cream, and the occasional sale item of clothing from Hot Topic? You wouldn’t have to ask your sister for money that way." Anya spins her cup in her hands, thinking. "Tara, I don’t know your schedule."

The hair’s out of Tara’s face, which is a good sign. "I don’t have classes on Tuesday and Thursday this semester. I could, I mean, once you trained me, I could–"

"You could give me time to work with the books, fill internet orders, or even get out and do my own shopping! And maybe a half-day on Saturday, which is usually busy?" Anya beams at her. "Twenty hours a week enough for you, amount above minimum wage to be negotiated after the first week? We start Tuesday?"

Dawn and Tara squeal and murmur happy acceptance respectively, and Anya feels a glow altogether separate from the joy of a successful manager expanding her staff. It’s like... it’s like she’ll have her own group of humans, not be dependent on Xander any more.

She takes another sip of coffee and feels another piece of that ill-fitting costume slip off her shoulders.

After Dawn and Tara leave, she makes a bathroom stop, brushes her hair and refreshes her lip gloss, then comes back and stands for a moment, enjoying the falling sun. It’s shining everywhere in Sunnydale–

And across the street there’s a gleam of familiar brown hair with just a hint of silver. It’s Giles, wearing his off-duty uniform of jeans and untucked button-down shirt, strolling with his hands in his pockets, oblivious to the world around him. He’s alone. And, Anya thinks, it looks like he’s heading toward the movies too.

Smiling, she follows.

He walks faster than she’d expect, however – she watches him slide through the late-afternoon crowd, moving more confidently than he does in the shop or with the Scoobies, and he slips out of sight before she’s ready to let him go. Maybe he’s taken off his own ill-fitting costume, she thinks, as she bumps past a poorly disguised Vaclow demon in gimme cap, bomber jacket, and sneakers.

She hopes it’s not that time of the century for the Vaclow; at least she doesn’t see any scales.

The red-velvet-swagged auditorium is only half full when she walks in. Giles is easy to spot – he’s the long-legged one hanging out on the aisle, close to the front. The gleam of brown and silver hair in the downlights makes her happy for some reason.

When she stops beside him, he stops throwing popcorn into his mouth. "Oh. Anya, hello," he says indistinctly, swallows fast, and then shows signs of going to his gentleman default. She recognises the shift in his chair as a preparation for standing, although it’s been a while since she’s actually experienced any man standing up for her, even him in the shop. "Are you... is, er, Xander...."

"You can stay there." With her hand on his shoulder she pushes him back down. "It’s just me on my own, Giles. Is that seat taken? Obviously it’s not, but I have to give you the chance to say no."

He looks at the empty row stretching out next to him, the emptiness all around, then gives her a quirked smile. "Please, Anya, join me."

She’s glad and a little surprised it’s not awkward, once she crawls over him (more heat and nice solid muscle) and falls into the velvet chair beside him. He shifts around so he’s not hanging over their shared armrest too much – he’s too big to be able to retreat completely, of course – and offers her his popcorn. She shares her Diet Coke, which makes him sniffy but which he drinks anyway. He applauds her news about Dawn and Tara joining the Magic Box team, gets a funny note in his voice when he says he wouldn’t have thought of it. They dance around the topic of loneliness on a Sunday afternoon: Hugh Grant is worth getting out of the house, she says, while he murmurs something about Richard Curtis’ writing contributions to Blackadder. They argue in a friendly way about the relative value of movie-theatre butter, which he deems the work of the devil but nevertheless has soaking his corn, and they both kick back in their seats when the lights dim.

Anya knows that when the screen goes intense white and everywhere else is dark, human sensations can be intensified – it’s private even in public, it’s a world of shadows. She suddenly feels a wave of terrible _solitude_ , a thousand years’ worth, but then Giles moves his arm against hers, offering her the popcorn again, and the music swells, and the world is all warmth and strength and bay rum cologne and buttered popcorn and Giles.

"Is that Elvis Costello singing pop? Christ, how the mighty have fallen," he whispers, and although she’s not sure what he means, the tickle of warm breath on her ear travels throughout her body.

She takes some popcorn to calm herself down. It doesn’t really work.

The movie is amusing enough, however, that her sexual awareness becomes nothing more than a happy hum in the background. She laughs when Hugh Grant’s character first encounters his scruffy blond flatmate Spike, and Giles mock-shudders. "Are you having a flashback?" she whispers.

His eyes shine, and he mock-shudders again. "Dear God, yes, horrible. If there’s a Weetabix and blood incident in the film, I’m drowning myself in what’s left of the butter."

She laughs harder, she yearns more, but she also takes the tub of popcorn from him after subduing his token struggle and sets it on the floor. No use in borrowing trouble, and regardless of his jokes, she knows he’s still on edge.

When Hugh Grant runs into Julia Roberts and spills juice on her chest, both Anya and Giles go still. She can hear him breathing now. In her mind she can feel him again in the shop, feel him touching her, her breasts tightening under cold liquid and warm big hand –

She sinks deeper into her chair, tilts her head against the back of the seat so that the rounded metal top can cool her nape. That doesn’t really work either.

It takes her longer this time to calm herself and make sense of the shapes on the screen. But she does, and she’s enjoying herself until Hugh Grant tries to climb an iron fence hiding a private garden. Something about it teases her memory – and then Hugh Grant falls and says "Whoopsadaisy," and she remembers an evening of patrolling this summer, when Giles fell after staking a vamp in Restview Cemetery. He’d caught himself on the edge of the mausoleum he was climbing, jolted himself badly, and he’d muttered something silly and British like that before giving a really impressive series of curses.

The difference is that Giles looked so unhappy and empty this summer, not like a romantic-comedy hero committing a misdemeanor, and the sadness lingers still. More like a thousand years of solitude, she thinks, which is stupid because he’s only in his late forties.

Wanting to help, she puts her hand on his arm and rubs in comfort. Her touch makes him tense, but then he sighs, stretches out, relaxes.

They stay that way for the rest of the movie, which is just as enjoyable as advertised.

When the lights come back up, they sit while the credits roll. She’s had such a good time, she thinks, he’s nice to be with, even taking the forbidden sexual attraction into account. She licks her index and middle fingers clean of the last of the butter, and ponders. She’s hungry despite the popcorn.

He glances at her, then away. "Well, I suppose–"

"I suppose," she says, speaking faster and louder, "I’m going to grab some dinner. Want to join me?"

............................................................................

The last two stuffed mushroom caps stare at Giles accusingly, and he leans back in his chair. "I couldn’t possibly," he groans.

" _I_ can!" Anya grins at him, and dives for the plate with a hunger he wouldn’t have believed of so slim a woman.

He’s not sure why he said yes to her offer to share dinner, but he’s glad he did. They found a table at his favourite cafe, ordered a range of appetizers and a half-bottle of wine to split. It’s... friendly, he decides, and he takes another sip of wine. He’s missed adult companionship – the taste of it during his short time in England, the lunches and dinners with his new colleagues and friends, reminded him how much. He can’t go back to his old Sunnydale life as the token grown-up so easily.

But Anya’s not the same as the Scoobies. He’s always known that intellectually, her tendency to blurt out vengeance details from three bloody centuries ago makes it hard to forget, but it’s taken the past week or so for him to register her as a person, one who’s lived a long time.

When she leans over the table to spear the last mushroom, her blouse falls open over those breasts he now knows by touch, and he remembers the last meal he shared with a woman – Lise, the folk-singer and activist he met in Northern California, with whom he’d enjoyed one stolen weekend a year ago. He rather wishes he didn’t register Anya so strongly as a woman, all curves and shine and strength, but he can’t go back to his old perception there so easily, either.

He takes another, longer drink of wine.

Still bent over, she stares at him. "You look sad and yet happy. What are you thinking about?"

He edits his thoughts as usual. "Er, well, I was thinking about England and my new work-team. We had some excellent tapas the day before I came back."

She licks her fingers – dear God, she does that all the time, it’s so distracting– and then sits back in her chair. "You said something about your new work before, and we’ve sure been barraged by faxes. What is it? Do you... You don’t have a new Slayer, do you?"

"No. Dear Lord, no. I, er, don’t officially have _any_ Slayer any more." He looks down at his wine, frowning. He hadn’t planned to tell anyone that– he doesn’t know why she’s so capable of catching him off balance.

"I’m confused." She hesitates. "So what’s your job?"

"Mm. Lead cataloguer and manager for a private collection of artefacts and books from the past five hundred years and a variety of dimensions – a renegade Watcher died and left us her things as a sort of, well, apology for apostasy. Or something. Anyway, it’s the kind of work I did before coming to Sunnydale." He spins his wineglass around, watches the red slosh against the sides. Almost to himself, he adds, "I’ll have to get back to work soon, or they’ll stop my salary again."

Anya says sharply, "Giles, this is all wrong. What happened? Because I thought you were set with the Council, what with Buffy’s Big Stand last year and telling Quentin Travers to give you back your job and retroactive pay and everything. I clearly remember the victory party. I made punch."

The anger he’s been living with surges to the surface -- it’s cold ocean water, it’s salt, it’s bitterness. "Right, I was proud of her for telling that git to sod off, I didn’t want to spoil it, but even then I knew the money wouldn’t flow that way. Bloody hell, Anya, if it were that easy, don’t you think I’d have told her to insist that the Council give _her_ a living wage? Suggested she go on strike until the old men agreed to pay the real worker?"

"You know, everybody told me I was stupid when I suggested that," she says quietly.

Her interruption gives him enough time to push the anger back down. More evenly he says, "You weren’t stupid. It’d have been a great thing if the Council... But no use worrying about that impossible dream. As it was, I was reinstated, and also demoted. It was only with a sodding lot of talking that I convinced them that this particular Slayer didn’t need a Watcher. Of course–" Now it’s remembered grief, not anger, that washes over him, and it’s new worry for Buffy, who keeps asking him to fix it even as she walks away– "At that point I thought she was dead and gone. Nobody was there to watch." He makes himself smile. "Only the descendant of a toaster oven, isn’t that what you said?"

She doesn’t smile in return, but leans forward and puts her hand on his. "I’m really sorry. For the toaster oven comment, even though it’s true, but also... I’m just sorry, Giles."

"For what? Other than your part in Willow’s spell–"

"Yes, that too." Her answer is absent, her gaze intent. "I feel like I’m asking everyone this today, but are you all right?"

He wants her to take her hand away because he so badly wants her to leave it there. He can’t, they can’t –

Pulling free, he says, "Fine. Just fine. Er, it’s getting late. Shall we go?"

Her eyes are so huge, so dark, but perhaps it’s the lighting in the cafe. Perhaps it’s just Anya. But after a charged, too long moment, she shrugs. "If you’re not going to talk, you’re not. If you need to, though, I’m here." She smiles at him, and he remembers again how very old she is. "I’m your partner, you know?"

The phrase lingers with him as they pay the bill – she insists on splitting it – and she shakes back her hair and re-applies lip gloss. He looks out at the Sunnydale night, visible through the half-open shutters in the café window.

When they get outside, however, he remembers something. "Er, Anya, if you don’t mind, I’ll walk you to Xander’s flat."

"I’m not staying there tonight, I’m at my place," she says rather shortly. "Anyway, I appreciate the gesture, but why are you offering?"

"Well. Before the movie I saw what appeared to be a Vaclow demon–"

"Giles, _I_ did too!" She grabs his arm so enthusiastically that he’s almost afraid she’ll toss him back through the café window. "But did you see scales? Because I didn’t."

He urges her forward in the general direction of her flat. The street is almost empty, the streetlights dimmer here than they should be. As they walk toward the old Sunnydale National Bank, now a renovated condominium-block, he says, "No, I didn’t either, which meant that even if it’s a danger-time the tail hasn’t descended and the change begun...."

"But just because you don’t see the scales doesn’t always mean they’re not there," she says, waving her handbag for emphasis. "I mean, any minute–"

A Vaclow tail, several feet long, flexible, thickly muscular, and yes, very much scaled, whips out of the alley in front of them. It arcs around, spiked end coming their way, seeking to catch any living creature it can. The rubbish container it snags isn’t what it’s looking for, however, and will only irritate it.

"–it could just appear from a random alley, oh my God!" Anya finishes in a much higher, if quieter, voice.

Growling comes from the depths of the alley. Yes, it’s a hungry Vaclow on an ordinary Sunday evening, and Giles knows he’s back in Sunnydale.

He pulls her into the negligible safety of a recessed storefront. "All right, all right. A Vaclow, shed of human guise and now a seven–"

"Or eight–"

"Or, possibly, eight-foot upright lizard-creature with a tail as long as its body, a fairly small brain, and fairly carnivorous appetites. Right. Good."

Anya’s already digging through her purse. "Okay, what weapons have you got?"

"A stake, useless. A knife. But it’s retractable titanium, it won’t work on the Vaclow hide, also useless." When she stops digging in favour of staring at him, he adds irritably, "What?"

"Where the hell do you keep these weapons?"

"Waist-belt, of course, behind my back. Why the bloody hell do you think I wear my shirts untucked?"

"Um, too much buttered popcorn and scones and things. But I was obviously misinformed." She shoves her hair behind her ears and resumes digging.

The Vaclow’s claws scrape across the concrete before Giles can snap at her, and the tail comes back around the corner, closer to them. The creature’s backing up – it will have some motor difficulties directly after the change, which sadly won’t make it less dangerous– and will be on the street any second.

Giles runs over the properties of a lizard-Vaclow in his mind, trying to think of a plan. "Do you have any–"

"Pepper spray!" she says triumphantly, holding it up. "A couple of good squirts in the eyes, and he’ll shrink!"

"Bloody brilliant." He means it. "Of course we’ll still have the problem of reaching his eyes without him hitting us. I could try a freeze-spell first, perhaps."

"Give me the word, and I’ll cast it with you." When he looks at her, she says, "I’ve been practising magic. Not in a resurrecting-Slayers way, though, just to practise."

The tail whips around one more time. The end smashes through the storefront window, glass going everywhere – Giles shelters Anya as best he can – and a small table is flung into the street. No time left. "Right. Stun, spray, climb. Fire escape."

"Exactly." She grabs his dominant hand with her own, and pulls him out onto the sidewalk.

The Vaclow (yes, eight feet tall) whirls around and hisses, then leaps forward, its short dinosaur-legs scrabbling at the air. The tail’s the worrying thing. It sweeps around, heading for their feet.

"Jump!" they both say, even as they leap. Sodding literal, both of them, he thinks irrelevantly.

But no time for that. Together they point their joined hands at the demon. He says, "Change be tossed, motion lost," Anya echoes him, they repeat it together.

He can feel magic blossoming in the link of their hands. Won’t last long, but they’ve got a chance.

The Vaclow stumbles. Its central muscles freeze, like locks slamming shut, but the sodding tail is unaffected. Without warning it cracks at their faces.

He feels the bite of the spiked end against the corner of his mouth, he feels Anya flinch when it hits her, but she fights it, she runs forward. "Help me!" she snaps, and he gets his hands around her waist and lifts her so she can aim the spray directly.

The canister hisses, then the demon hisses. Its scales ripple, head to claw, and the tail begins to thrash, beating against the ground–

"Come on." He grabs her hand again, and they leap over the whipping tail and into the alley.

The Vaclow will be vicious for another few minutes while the pepper works through its body, but it shouldn’t be able to climb. The old bank’s wrought-iron fire escape is still attached. Giles gets there first and jumps up to catch hold of the ladder, and then they start up the small stairs, their footsteps ringing into the night.

Hissing, hissing, and the stairs shake from below. He looks down to see the Vaclow’s tail smacking the ladder. "All the way up," he pants.

"Secret garden on the roof?" she says.

"Exactly." He manages a chuckle. They keep climbing.

They’re both breathing hard by the time they reach the top – it’s inadvisable to fight demons and climb stairs right after a good meal, he thinks – but he hoists her over the half-wall and then follows. The Vaclow’s hissing has dissolved into more familiar night-sounds, traffic and wind and distant voices.

When he steps down, he finds himself in a quiet, moonlit expanse of green, seasonal flowers and herbs, spices and sweetness. One of the Herbals lives in the building, and this is her private space. The Magic Box has provided several of the plantings, as well as the blessed stone at its heart.

Anya’s already gracefully sinking onto the tiny lawn. "Come here. You’re bleeding."

"Am I?" He thumbs at the sore spot, sees the liquid gleam. "Well, damn it." As he approaches, however, he says, "Oh, Anya, so are you. Here, let me get that."

His handkerchief is already out – he sits down a little awkwardly next to her, and then dabs at the corner of her mouth. It’s just a scratch, just a little blood.

When she lifts her face trustingly for him, however, he feels a warmth unrelated to any meal or exertion. Christ, she’s so beautiful – he says hurriedly, "Er, right. I think I got it."

"Okay. Now you." She takes the handkerchief from him, puts one finger under his chin to steady him, and then presses it to his hurt.

He closes his eyes for a moment so he can’t see. It doesn’t help. He can still feel.

When she’s satisfied he’s not bleeding any more, she gives back the handkerchief. "We’ve got another few minutes," she says, pulling her legs up to her chest, resting her head on her knees. "But it’s a nice place to hide."

"It is indeed," he says, and they sit in silence, with the moon and the wind stirring the green to keep them company. He doesn’t allow himself to think about this moment and its intermingled ease and pain. He thinks about it without ceasing.

When they must go, however, he stops her at the half-wall. Sunnydale is spread out all around them, irregular light, roads going nowhere, boundaries flowing into dark. Somewhere out there, Buffy is likely patrolling – "Anya, might I ask you a favour? Er, can you keep a secret?"

"You’d be surprised," she says, with that dry, sarcastic twist. "Yes, what?"

"Er, I was hoping...could you keep what we’ve talked about tonight just between us? About, well, Buffy not officially being my Slayer, and, er... everything."

She gazes at him, eyes so huge, so dark. "I believe secrets are the stupidest things humans ever invented, and I believe you’re making a mistake," she says, crisp and precise. Then her voice softens. "But it’s not my choice to make. All right, Giles. I won’t tell anyone."

He walks her home, sees her safely inside, and then makes his own way to his hotel. Once there, bolted inside his room, he all but falls into the overstuffed chair. Then he pulls out his handkerchief. It’s stained now – his blood, her blood, and a streak of her lip gloss, which smells like strawberries. He can almost taste the shine.

He puts the handkerchief to his face and closes his eyes. "Whoops-a-bloody-daisy," he whispers.


	3. Chapter 3

At the close of business on Halloween, Anya fills her hands with the money in the cash register, and she begins to dance.

It is a special Dance of Capitalist Superiority (because it’s been a _very_ successful retail day), and it is a Dance of Supplication for the Powers To Make It Better Soon, Damnit.

Ever since Sunday her life has been uncomfortable and strange and full of unhappy thoughts. Tara and Dawn have taken to sales and stockroom life as if they were born to it, they listen to Anya (or at least Tara does, and Dawn pretends well), and they brighten her days. But it also means that she gets Dawn’s breathless confidences about how much Buffy’s scaring her these days and Tara’s more reserved admissions of unhappiness with Willow.

She’s also watched Buffy slide around Giles the couple of times she visited the shop. Of course he’s keeping an important secret, which is just idiotic -- Buffy deserves to know the true story -- but he’s here at great personal cost trying to help, and Buffy’s not cooperating. The thing is that Anya knows Buffy’s hurting, but so is he. All his industrious attention to faxed reports and his dry little jokes, his fetching her the right morning drink without having to ask and his minor temper-flare Tuesday about last month’s accounts, don’t disguise it from her, and for some reason he’s hurting worse than before.

She had a magical Sunday with him, she’s yearned and eaten with him and fought by his side and rested with him in that secret garden in the dark. She cares so much more than she should.

Anya hasn’t been this angry at the mess of the world since the days she wielded D’Hoffryn’s amulet. What she understands now, however, is that the whole situation is too complicated for vengeance. She doesn’t know where to start or what everyone else needs.

She’s figured out what _she_ needs, however. Her week has been free of Xander: she told him she’s been too busy to see him, and he hasn’t pressed it, hasn’t come to the Magic Box. He did show up this morning looking piratically handsome, and he’s helped all day. She remembers, if dimly, why she chose him years ago and why she has loved him. But now she gets that’s not enough.

She spins on her roller skates, waving her money around, and Xander flashes by, and then Giles who’s leaning on his broom and smiling at her, and she spins faster and faster.

Xander says something she can’t hear, and then Dawn squeals, throws her arms around her, stops her. "Oh, _Anya_ , congratulations!"

"What?" she begins, but then Xander says louder, "That’s right, you guys. Anya and I... well, we’re getting married."

It’s like times before when she’s jumped from one dimension to another for a nice holiday, and she thought she wanted to go there, but it’s a slippery nightmare world. Her skates almost go out from under her. "Now? You’re telling them _now_?"

"Yes," Xander says, and then he’s there, big and grinning and used-to-be-safe, and he’s kissing her like nothing has happened. But something _has_ , and what used to make her happy now just makes her furious.

When he lifts his head, she starts to tell him, but she’s hit by a wave of Scoobies: Dawn asks about the ring, Willow hugs Xander but with one hand pinching Anya’s shoulder, Tara hovers, Buffy says something about celebration at the Summers’ house. And then Anya looks past them to see Giles hanging back, polishing his glasses, his mouth tight and his gaze fixed on the ground. She loses her words and her balance again.

It’s not until she’s in the car to go to Buffy’s that her voice comes back. When Xander tries to start the car, she stops him -- "Don’t. I have to talk to you."

"Yes, mistress," he says, joking. Then he looks at her and his smile dies. "Anya, what’s wrong?"

"What’s wrong? What’s _wrong_?" Her voice is shrill and nagging again, which ordinarily she hates, but now she lets loose with, well, a less blood-filled form of vengeance. "Why did you tell all of them we were engaged?"

"Whoa, whoa, did we walk through the mirror or something? Is this Bizarro World? Because I don’t want to be Superman, despite the incredible resemblance.... God, Anya, you’ve been bitching at me for months because you wanted to tell everyone."

" _Months._ That’s right, four months where I’ve had to shut up for no reason–"

"For Buffy! We had to wait, I told you!"

"That’s bull, Xander. How long has she been back?" She undoes her seatbelt and scoots as far against the door as she can. If she thought getting out and running would help, she would, but it won’t.

"I was waiting for the right moment... Okay, it took a while. So what’s your point? You wanted me to tell them and I did."

"No! No, I wanted to get to _choose_. I have to have a say in my own life, and with you I don’t." She stops for a breath. More quietly, she finishes, "With you I don’t and never will. I get that now."

He puts his hands on the steering wheel, makes driving gestures even though the car’s off and they’re not moving. "I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"I know you don’t, and I can’t explain it right." She rubs her head against the glass – she wants out, she wants out. "See, Xander, Captain Fear’s been steering both our tugboats. But...I need a new captain. I’m so tired of fighting and it’s all we do, and I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t want you to hurt me more, or roll your eyes and tell me things for my own good, or make everyone else your priority, and.... I need it to stop. I need _us_ to stop. Except we already have, don’t you see? We’re done already."

"Seems like I screwed up," he says. She can’t read his tone.

"No, no, we both did, we’ve both been too scared to look. But it’s...not okay any more, and we have to just see what’s been smacking us in the face for too long. We’re _done_."

He turns to her, reaches out. "But we can make it better! _I_ can make it better. Give me just a couple of days, all right? Give me a couple of days, Anya, and I’ll show you. But let’s... let’s not tell anyone right now. Keep the trouble quiet, you know, not give everybody revelation whiplash?"

"Haven’t you figured it out yet?" she says, as emphatically as she can. "Secrets are stupidand dangerous."

But he looks at her with those melting brown eyes, and maybe she does owe him that much. She hates it, though, and him a little for insisting, for still putting others’ needs before hers.

None of her Dances of Supplication ever work, she thinks. Damn it.

When she gets out of the car at the Summers’, she can’t walk right for a minute. She’s been on skates too long. The party’s more slippery nightmare world unsteady under her feet, too. Buffy’s brittle, Dawn’s over-excited and then raging when Buffy questions her Halloween plan with her friends. Xander’s really good at putting on a show, however, and both Summers seem to be happier around him. Anya says a couple of Anya-things that make them all laugh at her; it’s her part of the show, she thinks, she’s the comic relief, even though she doesn’t know what’s supposed to be funny.

Giles alternates between ridiculously false cheer and stoic brooding, and he manages to convey both when he catches her by herself in the hallway. But then the rest of the party noise falls away, and it’s just the two of them sitting in the dark while light on a screen flickers, and while lights stretch out all around them. She almost can smell the buttered popcorn and the flowers, and for a second she’s happy.

"Anya..." he says. That, and a half-smile, is all. No more cheer anywhere.

"Hi, Giles." She wants to touch him, and she can’t, and she wants to make it better, and she can’t do that either. She contents herself with, "Um, we made a lot of money today."

"Yes, we did," he says, but like he’s thinking of something else. His eyes are strangely dark, the hazel swallowed up by sadness. "I just wanted to say...er, really...congratulations, Anya. I’m happy for you."

"There’s no reason to be. Really. If I could only tell you–" To stop herself from saying anything she shouldn’t, she does reach up to check his scratch from Sunday; it’s almost gone, but she can still see a trace. It’s cool under her fingertips, though his skin is so warm–

His hand comes up to manacle her wrist, even as he jerks his head back. "Don’t. Please."

"Sorry. I don’t mean to... whatever. My bad."

"No, I’m so sorry...." He trails off, he looks away. But his thumb caresses the inside of her wrist for just a breath before he lets her go. Her feet almost go out from under her again, even though she’s not wearing skates.

He does his fake-smile again and then slides by her without touching – she remembers how fast he can move, how she lost him in the crowd on Sunday.

He’s gone before she can break her promise.

When Anya stumbles into the kitchen in search of refuge, Tara’s already there – sitting alone at the island, poking at dead food.

"What’s wrong?" they ask each other at the same time, smile awkwardly at the same time.

Tara shrugs it off first. "I got into a fight with Willow. She... used magic to give you guys decorations, and why does that sound so ridiculous to fight about when I say it aloud?"

"It doesn’t sound stupid to me. The little things reveal to us the great yawning toothy chasm of relationship hell. I read a Konyat-demon sonnet using that metaphor once. It ended with blood-letting." Anya sags onto the other stool. Then, "Did she magick up any chocolate while she was summoning balloons and streamers? Because I need some damn chocolate."

Tara’s smile is sad this time. "I know you do, Anya. Me too.... and I’ve got some M&Ms in my purse. We can share."

They’re only halfway through the bag, however, when all hell breaks loose – Dawn’s lied about her night out, Buffy’s sneaked out too, and poor Giles has to go off and figure out a plan to deal with delinquent teenager and delinquent Slayer. That leaves Tara and Willow and Xander and Anya to wait by the phones and clean up from the doomed party-attempt. Then they wait some more. It’s... a great yawning toothy chasm, that’s what it is. But at least she and Tara finish the chocolate.

When Giles, Dawn, and Buffy get back, Anya can’t stop herself from watching him. He looks exhausted and empty again, and even she can tell that it’s all gone wrong. _More_ wrong. She wants to help, but Xander catches her by the arm and makes their goodnights before she can say anything.

Once they’re out in the car, in a dark that doesn’t feel the slightest bit friendly, she tells Xander that she wants to be dropped off at her place first.

He guns the engine as they slide around the corner, away from Revello Drive. In a voice that sounds like his dad again, he says, "You know, Giles took me outside during the party and did his best marriage-is-scary-are-you-sure-you-want-to-do-this Britspiel. You have any idea why the stammering Englishman would do that?"

Somewhere inside, where she’s not sick at heart and also really sick from those M&Ms, she feels warmth uncurl like a night-blooming flower under the moon. But she says, "No, I don’t," and she puts her hand on the cool window.

When they pass the old Sunnydale National Bank, she looks up – it’s the same sky she saw with him but with a different moon. The fire escape gleams when they go by, and she closes her eyes.

...................................................................

Two days after Halloween, the demonically derived singing and dancing starts.

Giles is so busy trying to find his way through the various theories, trying to research the unresearchable, trying not to be horrified by the light-rock nature of the manifested magic (except for Anya’s interlude about bunnies), that he doesn’t dwell on his troubles. But they’re always there, little stabbing pains when he turns his head too fast.

Buffy has kept asking for more and more, and then refusing to talk to him. There’s something wrong behind her eyes, but he can’t understand...she’s still Slaying as ever she was, fierce and strong and far outside his control. It’s when she’s not working that she’s given up, as if she’s surrendered agency to him so he can solve everything. Yet he knows not only that he _can’t_ , but that he shouldn’t help her that way. His father taught him to pull himself through, keep moving forward despite pain and loss, and Giles doesn’t know any other way to be. He’s been doing it by himself since that awful day...

Equally to the point, of course, is that even if she’s depressed, psychotropic drugs in general interact negatively with a Slayer’s body-chemistry. He knows a person or two in the Council who might have a better suggestion, but he can’t ring them up and ask long-distance, can’t expose her to question or comment without fear of discovery. He’s already in too tenuous a position with the Watchers for bargaining, he remembers what happened with Faith, and Buffy’s not ready to face them yet. He’d have to do it in England himself, with appropriate precautions.

And Quentin Travers himself called yesterday and asked if Giles was coming back to his job. The threat was clear.

He would worry about Willow as well, but she’s still holding a grudge from his outburst when he got back – he doesn’t think new words will be any sodding good any more, look what she’s done to poor Tara.

He doesn’t allow himself to think about unattainable Anya. Yet he doesn’t stop thinking about her, even as he’s trying to figure out what’s making people bloody sing about mustard and parking tickets and the various contents of their hearts. He watches her dance about, her butterfly shirt fluttering, and he remembers falling in moonlight, borne up by her smile.

He sings his own solo. He so very much longs to stay for more than Buffy.

When they all end up at the Bronze, he thinks he finally might have a handle on what’s going on, because they have an actual demon to face, but then Buffy tells the secret she’s been keeping. He imagines a life pulled out of heaven, and he shudders – but for a moment he believes perhaps he _can_ help her now that she’s talking, perhaps....

Then in the midst of it all, Xander makes his sidelong confession that he’s cast the spell which has caused death and heartache in order to make sure there’s a happy ending, and Giles is so angry he can barely speak. It’s old rage, and new, and the inability to fucking _change_ anything.

He sings the last song with everything in his heart. _Where do we go from here_ , indeed.

The illusion of togetherness breaks as soon as the song’s done. Buffy’s already disappeared, as has Spike, left before the notes fade. Tara goes off with Willow, unspeaking, and Dawn comes to Giles’ side. "Can we go home?" she asks, like the little girl she isn’t any more.

"Right. Let’s just find Buffy, and I’ll make sure... yes, Dawn, I’ll take you home," he says.

He can’t help a glance over his shoulder at Anya and Xander, standing alone a breath apart on the dance floor. He can’t help hearing Anya say, "Okay, Xander. Let’s talk about this happy-ending thing," and for some bloody stupid reason his heart breaks more. He ushers Dawn out as fast as they can go.

Buffy’s not outside, however. They do a quick reconnaissance of the nearby streets to no avail, and since Dawn’s beginning to shiver, they hurry through the now quiet streets. When they get to the house on Revello Drive, Tara, wrapped in shawls, sits alone on the front steps.

She gets up as they approach, and opens her arms. With an inarticulate noise Dawn hurtles up the steps and into Tara’s embrace.

He smiles for the first time that night – Dawn’s taken care of, then. Actually, he’s not sure who’s leaning more on whom. But he does say softly, "Where’s Willow?"

"Upstairs." Tara hesitates. "Buffy hasn’t come home yet."

"I’ll go look for her," he says, although he now thinks it’s too late for that.

After they all say their goodbyes, without singing, he heads back out into the Sunnydale night. His footsteps echo in the silence – happy ending, happy ending, happy ending. He doesn’t really think that’s possible.

Hands in his pockets, he turns a corner on the street by the Bronze and almost stumbles into Spike. More accurately, he thinks, he almost stumbles into Spike’s lit cigarette. There’s ash and the whisper of a burn on his hand where he blocked it.

With a muttered "Bugger off," Spike seems likely to do his patented Evil stalk into the darkness. And Giles ordinarily would let him, but –

"Excuse me. Have you seen Buffy at all? After, er, the singing?"

There’s a rustle from the false trees on the corner, and Spike lifts a suspicious eyebrow before taking a long, elaborate drag. "Can’t say as I have. But what’s the matter, Rupes? Slayer run away from you again? Who could blame her, yeah?"

A dozen sarcastic remarks occur to Giles, but he contents himself with a cool, "Fine, thank you."

Before he can leave, however, Spike speaks again. This time it’s equally cool and dispassionate, a voice Giles has heard before. "See, old man, thing is.... she’ll never want your opinion again. Not really."

An echo: _Besides, she barely listened to you when you were in charge. I saw the way she treats you... Very much like a retired librarian._

Oh, Giles knows that Spike’s words a year and a half ago were part of the deal with Adam, just as he knows that these words are a vengeful return of what he’d said in tonight’s meeting. One would think they’d be easy to dismiss – except that they were true enough then, and they’re true enough now.

Rustle from the false trees, rustle in the night. Happy ending dying in the empty streets....

"Good night, Spike," he says, and he walks away without looking back.

His hotel room holds no appeal, however. He finds himself walking toward the old Sunnydale National Bank, finds himself leaping for the fire escape, finds himself climbing back to the secret rooftop garden.

It seems inexplicably smaller tonight, the blooms drooping, the scent less overpowering. Still, with his hands in his pockets, with thoughts of Anya and Buffy and loss, darker thoughts of a man harboring a hell-god dying under his hand, he walks a circle around the blessed stone. Wind is dead, and his footsteps make no noise up here, although his thoughts echo –

"Mr. Giles? Um, Rupert?" comes from the recessed doorway, and he almost trips. Fuck.

When he turns around, he sees the owner and maintainer of the garden, Ms. ...what is it... Marie Barker? Bunton? When she’s not with the Herbals she’s a counselor at the middle school, as he recalls, and her partner is Ms. Gutierrez, the very frightening physics teacher at the high school, oh Christ. "Er, hello. I’m, um, I’m very sorry to be trespassing."

"Well, _trespassing_... I hardly think it’s an accident you’re up here." Clad in robe and slippers, she steps out into the dim light cast by some solar lamps. She’s smiling, however. "It’s not the first time you’ve been up here lately, I think."

He doesn’t know how to answer that, so he offers an embarrassingly weak smile.

"I saw you and your partner – Ms. Jenkins, Anya from the shop – up here on Sunday. Only a week ago, isn’t it? Anyway. You looked so happy together that I didn’t wish to disturb you. I’m always glad to share my garden with those who bring love and good faith." She pulls her wrap more tightly around her. "However, I don’t think tonight is such a good night for you."

"No, it’s been horrible." That sounds too angry, too laid open. "Er, have you been, um, singing the past day or so?"

"Yes. Amazing, the things one learns about one’s partner when there’s music and forced words. Bad, bad energy – and I’m going to the gym first thing tomorrow. But what, Mr. Giles, have you learned about your partner?"

"I don’t... I don’t have a partner in that way. Ms Jenkins isn’t... Anya’s just...." Exasperating, beautiful, bright, annoying, oddly kind, so very desired. "She’s co-owner of the Magic Box. She’ll, er, be managing it when I go back to England. Almost immediately, in fact."

"That wasn’t the energy I read when you were here before," she says softly, then holds her hands up to stop his protest. "No, no. But I do have another question for you. Do you happen to know what my friend Jane Lavender calls you?"

He opens his hands in sad, mute invitation.

"She calls you Hugh Grant. When any of our circle needs to go into the Magic Box, she says, ‘Lovely! We must hope that Hugh’s there.’"

"Ah. Well, er, that’s....unutterably depressing."

She laughs, and the flowers nearest her stir. She’s quite pretty that way. "I’m so sorry! In apology, let me leave you with this from my garden." She plucks a white night-blooming flower, he can’t quite make out what it is beyond its rich scent, and offers it to him. "When you breathe this in on the way home, Rupert, ask yourself – What would Hugh Grant do?"

Stumble, stammer, burble... "Is this your considered mystical recommendation?" he says, even as he takes the cool-edged bloom from her.

But she’s already whispering ‘good night’ and disappearing back through the door. It’s clear that she expects him to leave, and he will. He’s got off easily all around tonight. _Let’s talk about the happy-ending thing...._

Before he leaves, however, he looks out over Sunnydale. In one direction lies the Summers house – he hopes that Buffy’s got home by now, hopes that all are safe there. Then he turns, and looks much closer. He can just see Anya’s apartment block from here, he fancies that her light is on.

He feels removed from it all and alone. Feels as if he’s already left.

When he climbs back down, however, there’s one of Sunnydale’s few homeless people hovering at the end of the alley. Giles has seen this one before, he’s one of the more unwashed religious types –

"You’re a sinner in the hand of an angry God!" the homeless man shrieks, two steps closer, one step back, empty beer bottle in his hand. His shopping cart scrapes against the side of the nearest building, and he shrieks again. "Sinner... _angry!_ "

"I shouldn’t be at all surprised," Giles says, and he catches the man under the elbow before he falls.

The man holds on. "But you know," he says confidentially, "I’ve been singing a little here and there the past couple of days. Mostly the blues. Little soft-shoe, too."

"Right there with you, mate." Giles hesitates. Anyone sleeping rough is likely to be vamp-food before sunrise, what are the options....

"Do I know you?" the homeless man says, with a blast of foul lager-breath.

Giles, possessed by some spirit of exhausted mischief born of desolation, says, "Well. Shouldn’t say, really. I can’t confirm that I’m–" a whisper – "Hugh Grant."

"Oh I knew it!" the homeless man whispers back, and his hand tightens. Earnestly: "You know, I love your work."

It’s with the oddest desire to giggle that Giles shepherds the man to the nearest homeless shelter and talks the attendant into letting in the poor sod. As the doors shut, however, he thinks that at least _this_ person he could help, and he loses all desire to laugh.

The flower from the secret garden is still in his hand, a little crushed now but still whole. He raises it to his face, breathes in, thinks of Anya and Buffy, thinks of loss and the happy-ending thing.

"So, right," he asks the multiverse, "what _would_ that bloody Hugh Grant do?"  



	4. Chapter 4

Anya’s singing, without demonic prompting, when she lets herself into the Magic Box the next morning. She’s also juggling her briefcase and two hot drinks, one of which is Giles’ favourite brewed tea, and she’s feeling as if all weight has been taken from her shoulders. Well, half the weight. She needs to talk to–

"Giles?" The back door’s unlocked, but there aren’t any sounds from inside. As she goes further in: "Giles, where are you?"

"He’s not here yet," Tara says, standing up from behind the counter. "Oh, let me help."

As she lets Tara take the briefcase, she frowns. "He’s not? He’s late, but...it’s not your day to open, is it? Did the dancing demon alter time as well?"

"No. There’s a Scooby meeting, Giles called it. Everyone should be here – Willow and I don’t have classes til later, and Dawn’s out of school for a few days, a teacher inservice thing." Tara puts the briefcase in the designated briefcase slot, then smiles. "Didn’t Xander tell you?"

"No. In fact, that’s a No, Never Again. The call list should be changed accordingly." She puts down both drinks before she spills them, because the weight’s dropped back onto her shoulders. If Giles wants a meeting, then he must have decided to go – and she suddenly, viciously regrets not calling him the night before, after she and Xander had their talk.

Tara’s smile fades. "I know you’ll tell me what happened when you can..."

"I want to tell Giles first. But I’ll tell you right after that." She hesitates. "What about you? Are you okay after the song and dance?"

"Not really. Willow and I... Just, thank you, Anya. We can talk about my changes later too." Tara looks up when the shop’s front door trembles under someone’s pounding. "Oh, it must be Dawn and Buffy, I’ll go let them in."

Anya sinks down on the chair she keeps behind the counter, and she sips her coffee. She thinks of last night, of Xander sitting with her on the empty stage of the Bronze, of them not touching but talking, really talking.

When she’d asked him about the spell and the stolen amulet, he said something about "showing her" they should stay together like he’d promised, and then he lost all the air he had. "I was so stupid," he said, staring up at the lights. "Because really? I was kinda hoping the spell would show we weren’t supposed to be together. No happy ending, no guilt! And paradoxically, happy Xander, which sort of screws the whole theory."

"I told you we were done, there wasn’t anything to feel guilty about _then_ ," she said. "But now I’m going to have to call in some favours and we’ll have to make restitution in order to make sure you, or we, don’t get vengeance dropped on our heads. People died. That often makes other people angry as well as sad, and they’ll want payback even though it wasn’t directly your fault."

"Oh God, no." She could tell he did feel guilty now. "Anya...."

"Don’t worry, Xander. I’ll take care of what I can. But we’re _officially_ , conclusively broken up now. No more idiot spells, no more secrets."

"I get it. Only have to hit me over the head a hundred, two hundred times, but I get it." He laughed at that, with hurt around the edges, then got to his feet. Once there, he shoved his hands in his pockets, shifted his weight, looked away. "You know, since we’re not keeping secrets any more...the day I asked you to marry me? Totally thought the world was ending."

"I _knew_ you were lying!" But she felt a wave of old affection at the memory, and she reached a hand out to touch his leg. "Still, it was a nice gesture. You’re a good guy, Xander. Often a crappy boyfriend, but a good guy."

This time his laugh sounded just fine. "I’ve heard that one before – and _please_ tell me you haven’t chatted with Cordelia lately! Talk about Young Mr Harris’s personal vision of hell." Before she could answer, he jumped off the stage and headed toward the door. Halfway there, however, he stopped under a downlight and smiled at her. "I want you to know, I take pride in being a really great _ex_ -boyfriend. But I’m not buying you a prom dress – or in your case, a plane ticket to England."

"Thank you, I can purchase my own clothing and transportation. But why would you think I need that?"

He took his hands out of his pockets and executed a slow, choreographed turn. His shoes made a funny hush on the floor, like he was dancing on sand, like maybe there was just one spark of Sweet’s magic left. As he came to a stop: "‘Cause the stammering Englishman will go back there sooner or later, and, well.... I’ve been paying more attention than you think." He touched fingers to lips, then waved. "‘Night, Anya. Happy endings to you."

Anya blinks herself out of the memory, takes another sip of coffee to remind herself it’s morning, then turns her foot to make that funny hush sound. She hopes she’ll feel like dancing soon, too.

"Hi, Anya!" Dawn slides onto the counter and reaches over it with a cake doughnut. "Want this? We’re saving the jelly ones for Giles."

Anya beams at her. "Hi, Dawn! You’re very thoughtful, but I’m not hungry." She finishes her coffee and stands up. Even without caffeine she’d be jittery, a second away from running, flying, searching for him–

The door to the stockroom opens, and here he is. He’s exhausted, she sees after one look, but still – "Giles! I didn’t hear you lurking downstairs. There wasn’t any humming."

"No. Er, I was quiet." He is also very contained, as if holding in hurt. When she can’t help her hand going out to him, he gives her a tight-lipped smile, and then it’s one of those secret-garden moments, all moon and wind and Giles. She doesn’t realize she’s not breathing until he looks away, and it’s just Monday morning again, except she’s suffering from oxygen deprivation.

"So what’s the what?" Buffy says, mouth full of doughnut, as she walks toward them. Despite the usual Buffy-front, she seems sad and tired too. Almost dancing to death must not agree with her.

"Ah, yes, er... I need to speak to you first, Buffy. In private." Giles shuts the stockroom door behind him, then wavers as if he can’t manage another step.

And Anya makes it there for support, putting the cup in his hand and wrapping his fingers around it, enjoying the buzz of contact. God, he has nice hands. "Giles," she says quietly, "I know you have important things to tell her, but could I talk to you first?"

He stares down at the tea like he’s never been given anything so precious before in his life, or maybe like he has no frame of reference for flavoured water with added milk. "Anya...thank you. But I do need to talk to Buffy."

"Are you going to tell her the special thing?" she asks. "I really think you should."

"No. Or not that particular special thing." That’s the old Giles talking, snobby, snotty, thinks he’s so great.... He glances at her – and then his face and voice change, become open and concerned. "What is it?"

Before she can answer, however, Buffy’s in between them, yanking him away so fast that some of his tea slops over onto Anya’s hand before he’s gone, disappeared into the training room. The door slams, and it’s a barrier she can’t cross.

"I hope that rapid disappearance isn’t an omen," she mutters.

She, Tara, and Dawn move around the shop aimlessly while voices rise and fall inside. There’s doughnut-eating, and a little thumb-wrestling, and then Buffy’s voice gets high and choked without words, and the training room door slams open. Buffy’s eyes are too bright, her long coat wrapped too close around her body, and Anya knows whatever it was went badly.

"Is Giles–" she starts, but Buffy pushes past her just as he walks out. He looks expressionlessly distressed. She goes toward him, and for his ears only: "What _did_ you tell her?"

He takes off his glasses and begins to polish, in his usual ritual of invoking control. Just as quietly, he says, "That I’m leaving tonight, that she can handle it here. I can’t... You know I can’t stay, Anya."

She puts her hand on his arm. "Yes, you have a work deadline, I’ve read the most recent faxes." When he halfway glares at her, she says, "Oh _come on_ , they were sent here to the shop! Like newspaper headlines flashing in my face saying ‘Read me’! Anyway, you’ve got to do your archive job, which dedication I applaud, but even so..."

The front door opens with enough noise to distract her, and Willow and Xander come in. He waves a Robinson-May bag at her. "Hey, Ahn, I brought what I could find of your stuff, but you already cleared almost everything out." Stopping for breath, looking around: "Did the meeting get started without us? Sorry, Willow wasn’t ready when I picked her up. What’d we miss?"

Willow doesn’t say anything, just pulls Xander’s coat around her and smiles.

Buffy steps up onto the higher level shop floor, however, calling everyone’s attention to her. "Okay, we’re all here now. Go ahead, Giles, do the announcing."

He puts his glasses back on, winces, fake-smiles. "Well. I just wanted to say, to, er, give you all fair warning. I’m leaving for England tonight, and I plan to stay there, um... indefinitely."

"Now?" Xander all but yelps. "I mean – _Now_? Anya, didn’t you tell him?"

"When would I have had the damn time?" she snaps, and then, as Giles murmurs something, she takes his hand. When he tries to move back, she’s ready for it, she holds on. That makes him focus on her, watching and listening – he really does listen, it’s wonderful, it’s amazing – and she says, "I know you have to go, but could you give it another day or two? Because a young, single shopkeeper’s heart can only take so much...."

"Anya, you know I–" His grip tightens. "Hang on. Did you say, er, ‘single’?"

The front door opens again, but she doesn’t let go, _he_ doesn’t let go.

Spike comes in, accompanied by a flapping blanket and a trickle of smoke, and he’s complaining about a floppy-skinned messenger and also requesting asylum, which elicits a chorus of disapproval and jokes. This all happens at the periphery of Anya’s attention. She’s gazing at Giles... who looks confused and yet encouragingly hopeful.

"Yes, I broke up with Xander approximately ten minutes after he announced the engagement – we’d been mostly broken up before that – but he asked me to promise to keep quiet. Ridiculous idea. You see? Secrets are _stupid,_ and they cause demon intervention, musicals, and bad decisions. Like whatever you told Buffy."

"Anya, Anya," he says, on the edge of a weary laugh.

But Buffy says more loudly, "He’s not going to stay. I asked, I need...." and all the life in the room is crushed by the weight of her grief.

Because Anya’s so close, she feels the impact on, and the hopeless pain in, Giles – he’s not laughing now. "Buffy, please."

"If you all only understood how I felt! How I feel like I’m lost, I’m dying again, but–"

And the world darkens, even as Anya’s mind empties. As she collapses into sleep, she is cushioned by a big, solid, comforting male body.

When she wakes to confusion, she’s still holding his hand.

That’s what carries her through the next hours, when she can’t remember her name without written help, or her home, or her past, and when cadres of vampires and accidentally summoned rabbits terrorize their shop and the nice if bizarre amnesiac people in it. She’s got her partner Rupert -- she adores the strength of that name, regardless of its slightly stuffy, library-paste connotations, and she adores him, even when they’re arguing, which they do often and with a great deal of skill and passion.

The fight about his one-way airline ticket is an especially lively one, coming as it does in the middle of her badly cast spell; they hiss at each other and he curses attractively while he hunts for the right words to disappear the monsters, and then it’s her turn to say the right words ("I’m sorry" – magic beyond magic), and all the anger goes away.

That’s when Rupert finally kisses her. Oh, he kissed her when they woke up, a sleepy ‘good-morning’ brush of lips before the amnesia kicked in, and she kissed him casually when she straightened his tie (both times; he gets rumpled quickly because he thinks very hard), but this...this is the real thing.

He takes her in his arms, slides her back until she feels like she’s floating, then leans in. She feels magic sparking everywhere, smells flowers and green things and bay rum cologne. He’s got one big hand supporting her back, the other caressing her bottom, and then he just...kisses her, deep and slow and a little bit rough. It could take days to finish this. It could take days to _recover_ , she thinks–

Just as the magic in the shop changes, and who they are comes rushing back.

He doesn’t stop immediately, because this _is_ the real thing.

But after he returns her to her feet, he blinks himself back to where they were before all spells were cast. "Anya! Bugger, I’ve missed my flight, and what the bloody hell will the hotel have done with my luggage, I was supposed to check out at noon, and– Oh, _fuck._ " Still holding onto her, he sort of collapses in on himself. "And I’ve got to call the Council, and I don’t know what to say."

She can’t stop herself from petting him a little – he is infinitely pettable – before she pushes him toward the door. "Okay, Rupert, okay. You go handle your mess, and I’ll clean up the mess in here."

"But I should help you," he says, stopping in his tracks. It’s gratifying that he doesn’t seem to want to leave her.

She puts her hands around his face, enjoys the buzz of contact even more now. " _I_ chose the wrong book, and _I’ll_ clean it up. I know you’ve got stuff to do. But... really, can you stay in town just another couple of days? You could come to dinner tomorrow night. My place."

He curves his hands around her wrists, his music-roughened fingertips dancing over her skin, and when he looks at her, time stops. When he speaks, though, his words are so bizarre that she begins breathing again – "Last night after everything, Anya, I went back to our garden to work things out in my head. When I was there... I was told to ask myself, ‘What would Hugh Grant do?’ But the truth is, um, I have no bloody idea. What do you think?"

"Well, first, I think it’s weird." When he starts to laugh, she says, "But second... isn’t it a feature of Hugh Grant movies, at least the ones where he’s not evil or slimy, that he has to learn to express himself? He has to _tell_ whoever the truth. No secrets. Give the girl enough to decide."

His laugh dying away, he gets still and...concentrated, God, he thinks so hard. "Yes," he says, then more strongly, "Right, yes. Anya, you are brilliant." He grins at her. "It’s bloody terrifying."

After kissing the inside of each of her wrists, he lets her go. When he gets to the door, he hesitates -- "What time tomorrow night? Should I bring anything?"

"6:30, and just yourself," she says, and he smiles at her.

Anya sings without demonic prompting while she cleans, even though she’s alone, even when she has to touch reminders of cotton-fluffy hellbeasts.

.......................................................................

It rarely rains in Sunnydale, but now low pressure is coming, bringing weather-change and moisture. Giles looks up to see blue and then dark grey and then blue swirling together, sun, cloud, sun, more cloud. A touch of home, he thinks, something to get him ready to leave.

He heads up the walk to the Summers home, clutching the folders he’s spent the morning putting together. Last night after handling the worst of the emergencies, he sat in his hotel room with a notepad for planning and a drink from the mini-bar, and watched the eighty-fifth airing of Four Weddings and a Funeral on cable. He also practised saying a speech he’s not sure will work.

He fell asleep thinking of Anya and the way she fit so perfectly against him, and of ridiculously sentimental movie-kisses in the rain.

This morning, however, it’s been all work – he’s ticked items on the notepad, made a dozen phone calls. This time, his discussion with Buffy and the others will be done not out of pain but out of... preparation.

Dawn’s waiting on the front porch for him. "Okay, I’ve got her ready. In the kitchen, fixing lunch?" she says, then holds out her hand. "Do I get something?"

"This." He finds her folder and hands it over with all due ceremony. "In there, you’ll find a phone card for the fortnightly phone check-ins, my contact information, and a template for your twice-weekly reports, to be faxed from the Magic Box under Anya’s or Tara’s supervision. I’ll want their initials on top of each report."

"You are _so strict_." She grins at him. "But okay, for a trip to England...."

"Right. Keep your grades, reports, and behaviour at an acceptable level, and you too shall win an exciting summer holiday package in Somerset!" he says in the closest to a bad-advert voice he can manage, which is regrettably not very close.

"Oh, _Giles._ " No one can sound as world-weary as an almost-sixteen-year-old girl – and no one can change mood more quickly. She comes lightly down the steps, hugs him far less lightly. "I’m, like, really scared," she whispers.

"I know you are, Dawn. But we’ll all do better." He hugs her back before presenting another folder. "Um, since I’m not going by the shop today... would you give this one to Tara?"

"Sure, no problem." She adds it to her pile. "Did...was it you that made it so that Tara would stay and Willow would leave? I wanted it, but..."

"No. That was their decision." One for which he is profoundly thankful, he thinks but doesn’t say. Learning that yesterday’s amnesia was due to Willow has not comforted him -- but at least she has a safe place to go.

From inside the house come heavy, burdened footsteps, and Dawn makes a face. "Speaking of... okay. Okay, I’m going to go to the Magic Box and get this all set up, and you and Buffy can talk the talk in peace." Her face twists the other way in thought. "Wait, shouldn’t Anya, like, get instructions too?"

"Er, well, I’ll give hers in person. Not at the shop."

Her eyes sparkle with almost inhuman energy. "Oh yeah? _Really_? Well, who knew ...ewwwwww." With a giggle she spins toward the street – heading toward the Magic Box, he imagines. "I’ll find it all out, you know!" she calls over her shoulder.

"I’m sure you will. Sooner, rather than later." She’s clever, he thinks. Someday that girl’s going to be a true Watcher... no, wiser than that.

Smiling, he jogs up the rest of the steps – to come face to face with Willow, weighed down with bags. Moving her things out to seek refuge at Xander’s, as Tara told him when she called. "Willow, sorry, do you need help?"

"No." Eyes red-rimmed from tears flicker. "It’s not as heavy as it looks."

She’s still using magic as a convenience, he can feel it. Which makes what he wants to say more important, actually -- he puts her folder into the nearest bag. "I wanted to leave this for you. Er, it’s two phone numbers for people I’d like you to call. Miss Jane Lavender, and Ms. Marie Barker."

"Aren’t those...Tara told me...aren’t those some of the local witches, the ones you and Anya call the Herbals?" Her voice clearly implies that they’re amateurs.

Repressing another surge of anger, he says evenly, "Willow, you have enormous power. But you don’t have a sense of why, for what purpose, you should use that power. Apparently Tara and I have failed you–"

"No!" Her protest is swift, and he suspects, not entirely true. There is too much anger here, and it’s not just his.

"Tara and I have failed you," he repeats, "but these women know more than their exteriors suggest. They _know_ why and for what." He holds her gaze, then touches above his heart. "Listen to them, and learn. You are, after all, one of the most gifted students I know."

She flushes, although he can’t read what it means. "Giles," she says, her voice choked with more tears. "I just...."

"I’ll check on you from England," he says. "You and Xander... er, you both be well, all right?"

She bites her lip and nods – old girlish gestures, although he’s afraid she’s grown far beyond them. "Bye, Giles. And I’ll do better. Just watch."

"I will, Willow." He does watch her as she goes down the path. She walks quickly despite her burdens.

Then a gust of chill, rain-laden wind flutters the last folder in his hand, reminding him of his own much loved burden and the conversation _he_ needs to do better.

Although Buffy is in the kitchen as Dawn said, she’s sitting in the dimness, head bowed, hands locked on top of the island. He feels...well, it bloody doesn’t matter what he feels, he tells himself, and he flicks on the light.

She doesn’t even twitch, doesn’t turn around. "Hi, Giles. Come to say goodbye again?"

"Er, yes, and no." He takes the bar stool next to her. How many times have they sat together before pressure-change, before the world shifts around them.... He puts the closed folder in front of her.

She doesn’t move. "When are you leaving?"

"Tomorrow afternoon. I did...Buffy, I told you badly, before, and was rather stupid about it, and I want to rectify my mistakes. An annoyingly wise woman recently told me two things. One, that secrets are, well, stupid. And two, that I should ‘give the girl enough to decide.’"

Buffy rests her head on her hands. Muffled, she says, "But you’re still leaving."

"Yes." He plays with the folder, trying to find the words. "You see...this is, er, one of the secrets. I’m officially no longer your Watcher. The Council’s given me an archivist position in England instead, and I need to return." When she stirs, he hurries on. "What I said to you yesterday is true – I’ve taught you all I can. Let’s be honest with each other. When was the last time you _regularly_ trained with me? High school, wasn’t it?"

"But–"

"And you’ve done perfectly well without it. Not to mention that I can count on the fingers of one hand the times you’ve taken my advice in the past two years... in matters of Slaying, at least."

"Giles, that’s so not fair–"

He puts his hand on her shoulder. She’s shuddering under her own hurt. "No, it is, and it’s _fine_ , Buffy. You’ve become your own source of strength, and you don’t need me any more, not as a Watcher. I’ve done my job, and the worlds and the Council know that you are a formidable... person."

"Still not helping," she says, and the bite is clear even through the barriers.

"I know. I know, and..." He doesn’t know if it’s his trembles or hers which shake their connection. Taking a deep breath, he pushes on. "I’m so sorry I can’t. Because what you want, what you _need_ , is someone to take the pain away. I know how desperately you’re hurting. And the horrible, deeply unfair thing is that no one can take it away."

She looks up at that -- tears are there but not falling – and shakes her head mutely.

He swallows his own distress for her. "It’s just... that’s what we have, Buffy. You ache more, perhaps, because of that formidable self, but the pain we all carry with us. If I could give you back heaven... but I can’t, you see? I so wish I could fix it for you, but it’s too much, it’s impossible." He thinks of his mistakes, he thinks of cold dead wind, he thinks once more of Ben dying under his hand. That secret he will _not_ share with her, but.... "We all carry hurt with us."

"I can’t do this," she whispers. "Giles, I can’t."

"Yes, you can. And what _I_ cando, what I failed to do yesterday, is to remind you that I’m here even when I’m not, and to give you, er, ‘enough to decide.’ Enough to rest before you move on."

She turns to look at him. Taking a deep breath, he opens the folder in front of her. He flips past the contact information, the phone card (with a separate chart indicating the difference in time zones between Bath and Sunnydale), Anya’s list of debts and outgo with his annotations and suggestions, the small cheque for emergencies which has taken all the money in his local account – and he stops on the last page. "Right. Part of the problem, I think, is what you’ve told me before... other than your Slaying job, you don’t know what to do with your days. You needn’t decide right now, but, um, while you figure it out, I’ve taken the liberty... er, well, I rang some acquaintances at the University, and a clerical job’s opened up in the Development office. Just answering phones and setting up appointments, and filing – Um. You do remember the alphabet, don’t you?"

Even with threatening tears, she makes a face -- remarkably like Dawn’s earlier, in fact. "Yes, library guy, I remember."

Encouraged, he says, "Right, then... the salary’s not great, but there’s enough to cover your bills with a bit left over, now that both Dawn and Tara are working, and there’s a health plan, and free tuition for employees, should you wish to try school again. Only if you want, mind." He taps the paper. "I’ve started your c.v., which we can rework over lunch, and I’ll drive you to the interview I’ve set up at two, it’s really just a formality–"

"Oh God, Giles," she says, and suddenly she hurls herself at him. He barely has time to steady himself for them both before she’s hugging him, and then she’s back on her stool, crying incoherently. He _thinks_ it’s good crying, however. If not happy, happy-ish.

Fighting his own emotion, he says, "Well, then. Sorry I mucked it up so badly yesterday, but even the best, er, rakish uncles make mistakes. And – dear Lord, Buffy, don’t cry so hard, you’ve got an interview in a couple of hours."

But they both know he’s joking, mostly, and while the light changes outside and the first rain strikes the kitchen windows, he rubs her shoulder until the sobs run out.

When she’s done, she blows her nose on his handkerchief and asks him if he’ll be staying for dinner. He smiles at her. "Thank you, but no. I’ve got a gig of my own."

...............................................................

It’s 6:28, and Anya is about to jump out of her skin. Not like the skin-leapers of Gratoz, of course, because that’s just unpleasant, but in anticipation.

She spins around to survey her studio. Last night she came home and cleaned while Four Weddings and a Funeral played on TV, she did laundry and rearranged things to her taste, and on her lunch hour, after she spoke to a demon-contact about minimising the ramifications of Sweet’s spell, she bought a linen tablecloth and some blue dishes and a new outfit. Her apartment looks like her own, like the beginning of good things. She feels like she’s living her own life now.

Now all she needs is Rupert, even if he’s leaving tomorrow.

6:29. She looks out the window at the lowering clouds. It’s rained off and on all day, and the sky looks like it’s about to be on again. She hopes that he gets here before–

Doorbell.

When she opens the door, she lets in the sweet smell of rain in a dry land. He’s turned away, doing his own survey of the surroundings and the flowers she has in her window box, but he whips around at once. Although he’s wearing jeans and a button-down, he’s tucked in his shirt – really, quite a nice stomach-- and that makes her laugh a little, even as she says breathlessly, "Hi, Rupert. Come in."

"Hello, Anya." He smiles a bit nervously. "Er, I will, but first, for you–" he hands her a gorgeous bunch of flowers, all colours that should clash but don’t, and then two bottles of wine, one red, one white – "and for me. I hope."

"That’s so...oh, they’re pretty, and the wine looks good too. Come in while I put them away."

"Well, I just wanted...I’ll stay here for the moment."

She gazes at him inquiringly. "Is something wrong? Because even if you somehow were vamped in the past twenty hours, I’ve invited you in, and–"

"No, no. That’s not it." He gazes back, and the world goes silent – no traffic noise, no loud neighbours three doors down, nothing. This isn’t retraction but expansion, she thinks: a world goes silent when it grows too fast for breath. "Um, Anya, if you’ll put those away, I want to say something to you."

"One of your speeches? I guess it’s good I haven’t ordered the food yet."

That makes him laugh, and he’s still laughing when she gets back from dumping the flowers and wine on the table. He’s got a hand on the doorjamb, and he’s taken off his glasses, and he’s all green shirt and hazel eyes against the grey evening. He looks like the man who she’s seen cast spells and serve customers with skill, like a man who fights hard and likes his food and whispers funny comments at the movies, like a man who thinks too much and cares too much and hurts too much, like a man who’d be at his best in a night-garden. Giles. Rupert. "Hi," she says quietly.

"Hi." He holds out his hand to her, and she takes it. Once connected, he still seems unwilling to start.

It’s quiet out, and mist begins to swirl.

Finally he says, "I’ve been thinking about Hugh Grant films, Anya, and how, as you’ve pointed out, he’s always got to explain himself at the end, which... Well, I’d always prefer not to, if allowed, but I suspect I’m just bloody lazy. So I’ll try." His finger tickles the inside of her palm, sweet as rain in a dry land. "Although we’ve only, er, found each other, we’ve worked with each other for some time. I’ve long thought – grudgingly – that you are quite good at tactics, while I’m better at strategy."

"I’m short-term girl, you’re long-term guy?"

He smiles. "Well, in some ways you’re, er, fairly long-term as well. But yes. So I rather thought I’d share my long-term planning, ask for your views." He pulls her just a step closer. She can feel the rain now, soft droplets on her face. "I’ve got to finish the job I’ve contracted for – it’ll take several months. I can schedule a couple of short visits here, and I’d like you to visit me in England a time or two as well. And, right, I’ll attempt to learn that sodding evil e-mail."

"You make it sound like it’s a demon."

"Well, there bloody _are_ demons on the internet, let me tell you." He’s closer now, big and warm, and she puts her other hand on his waist – they’re dancing without dancing. "Anyway ...I’m still thinking about how we’ll go on after that, whether I leave the Council and come back here to set up a consulting job where I can still help, still fight what must be fought, or whether we sell up here and you come to me. I’ll not figure out the specifics until later, and you’ll get a choice, because... any strategy does include you now. Er, if you’d like it to."

She feels like she’s swallowed the sun, like she’ll burst with pleasure and possibly tears, but – "That’s a _really_ good speech, Rupert. Did you practice it much?"

He’s laughing again, sort of helplessly. "Um. Yes. Couple of hours. The room service waiter found it rather dry, but on the whole, moving."

"It’s perfect." She can’t get any closer, but she tries. "I completely approve of it and this strategy, and I think you’re wonderful, and brilliant, and–"

But he’s kissing her then, deep and slow and a little rough, lifting her off her feet, and she lets herself go soft like the rain.

When he lets her down, lets her breathe, she whispers, "So, as for tactics.... I’ve planned a few activities for tonight. We’ll get food delivered, either pizza or Indian, for supper; we’ll watch Sense and Sensibility, which I’ve rented because it has Hugh Grant and we can enjoy mocking any historical or geographical inaccuracies; we’ll have sex; we’ll sleep. You get to choose the order."

Silently he lifts her up again and carries her inside. The way he uses one booted foot to kick the door shut behind them is utterly unlike Hugh Grant, and she finds herself just a little more in love with him.

He chooses sex first. She doesn’t even have time to open her futon before they’re lying down, and he’s kissing her again, whispering questions about protection even as he strips her bare. He shows great enthusiasm for light bondage and for kissing her breasts – "‘s been on my mind since I spilled that bloody orange juice," he says indistinctly, his mouth full of her – and with his hand gives her an intense pleasure-moment before she gets to so much as unsnap the top button of his jeans. But she does get her chance, and she gets to explore and taste all of him, salty-sweet from neck to nice substantial cock, before he flips her over and slides inside. She wraps her legs around his waist like a weapon-belt, throws her head back, and thinks of him, thinks of England. It is a land of green and ecstasy, she thinks wildly, and when he shudders inside her, she says his name and comes with him.

Next, supper – which is a slightly more conflict-rich time, as she really wants pizza and he really wants Indian and he is not above using sexual attentions to cheat, which is a very useful thing to know about him. Eventually, however, she makes the call while he goes out and fetches his bags from the rental car. They eat their vindaloo and drink their excellent wine and squabble over the last samosa, while the candles flicker and the rain is loud against roof and window and wall.

Then, a little tired, they arrange themselves on the futon, she tucked up between his sprawled legs, covered by a light blanket, and by candlelight they watch the movie. During the sad parts she is given his fresh handkerchief, which smells of him and sex and bay rum cologne.

And near the end, when Hugh Grant begins to explain himself to Emma Thompson, Rupert puts his mouth on Anya’s neck and tightens his hold on her, and she lifts her arms and locks her hands behind his nape. His lips silently move on her skin, as if he’s following the words. _I came here with no expectations. Only to profess, now that I am at liberty to do so, that my heart is, and always will be, yours._

Anya understands why Emma Thompson cries at that part even though it’s a happy-ish ending, and after the movie ends and the screen goes blue and fuzzy, she and Rupert sit quiet and interlocked, while the rain is loud against roof and window and wall.  



End file.
